The brains behind the Indian Premier League (IPL) spoke of conquering the world and turning Kolkata Knight Riders into the new Manchester United, but his attempts at gravitas were hamstrung by his announcement that he would be embracing the modern age via a beauty pageant.

Meanwhile, François Pienaar, the South Africa rugby union captain who lifted the World Cup in 1995, shared a stage with Shilpa Shetty, a Bollywood star best known in Britain for being shouted at by Jade Goody, while a marketing guru quoted Malcolm X and said that it was better than working with Mickey Mouse. Tomorrow, a cricket tournament will try to break out of its spandex hotpants.

Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, has pulled off a minor miracle in switching the Twenty20 tournament to South Africa in the space of a month, but his football analogies invite fresh scepticism. “My only choice was to turn it into an opportunity,” he said of the bombs that prompted the move to a new continent. “Now we hope IPL teams become worldwide teams like Manchester United and Chelsea. That’s the objective and we are able to turn that into a reality now.

“Our aim is to build fanbases across the world. In England you have EPL [the Barclays Premier League] and they all have fans all over the world. My son likes Manchester United. He has never been to a game but watches religiously on television. We want people to get attached to teams and it’s a huge opportunity to build IPL as a global brand.” Modi has worked wonders, aided by Pienaar and Etienne de Villiers, whose marketing background embraces executive roles with the ATP tour and Walt Disney. The opening four matches in Cape Town, featuring the million-dollar men Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff among others, are sold out, despite an extra 5,000 seats being installed at Newlands.

The IPL knockers have poured scorn on the way eight “franchises” were contrived from an auction bankrolled by celebrities and industrialists, but South Africa is ambivalent about the mercenary machinations and is lapping it up. The emphasis is on what Shetty called an amalgam of sport and entertainment, but Modi’s claim that it has been “smooth sailing all the way” here serves only to underscore the problems elsewhere.

Pakistan’s players have threatened legal action after being excluded, protesting in Lahore under the banner “pay us or play us”, while Modi’s name is reportedly on the hitlist of an underworld gang, D Company. An intercepted telephone call allegedly suggested that Modi could be the target of an assassination attempt, but he was dancing on the top deck of the lead float at the launch parade yesterday while IPL security agents mingled with the crowd.

De Villiers cited Malcolm X’s remark that “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything” to suggest that the IPL was about modern India. Hence, the Miss Bollywood SA competition, where a fan at each match will be selected on her looks by a panel of judges. It sounds a crass anachronism but Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywood heart-throb and Kolkata owner, dismissed claims of prejudice, saying: “All sexual decisions I leave to Lalit.”

Pienaar tried to push the sporting issues, saying how it would be fascinating to see enemies team up as friends and vice versa. Pietersen and Flintoff, that brace of deposed England captains, go head to head in Port Elizabeth on Monday when Royal Challengers Bangalore take on Chennai Super Kings. It is an intriguing prospect but will tell us little about their capacity for reinvention.

However, those damning the IPL might ask whether the England team’s recent past, comprising multiple captains, a mutinous pedalo and Paul Collingwood in a lap-dancing club, has been any less of a circus.

The only trouble with Modi’s plans for the new Manchester United is that, while people here are talking IPL, nobody is talking about who will win.
Source – timesonline.co.uk